Thought festival season was over, did you? THINK AGAIN. Festival season will NEVER die! This week there’s horror films, comedy, and two very different kinds of visual art, not to mention an entire event that involves running through colorful clouds. Touché, September!

Watch national and international and interplanetary (don’t I wish) artists brighten up the meanish streets of Richmond down at the ol’ bus depot. Those folks are muraling it up, and you can go watch, listen to music, eat some good food, do some fun crafts, and just be generally super cool. If you make it out of there without paint on your clothing, an angel will get its wings painted by Ed Trask.

Thursday, September 12th – Sunday, September 15th • see site for times

I’ve never been to The Color Run™ but I imagine it to be exactly like this scene from India’s longest-running and most beloved film. I can’t promise you that Amitabh Bachchan will be there, but he does tend to turn up everywhere else, AM I RIGHT?1 This 5K involves you wearing white clothes and holding a bag of powdery, painty stuff. As far as I can tell, everyone throws colors at each other and the experience both looks and feels pretty neat. Also their FAQ page is pretty entertaining!

Frustrated by the lack of take-home tangibility of the RVA Street Art Fest? Bring that wallet over to South Side, and prepare to ante up some of your hard-earned cash for a lasting, beautiful piece of jewelry, painting, ceramic, or anything else cooked up by the 75 artisans involved with this year’s fest (the 22nd annual!). It’s a lot more fun than stealing over to the bus depot one night and carefully removing a brick.

Film is an art that’s just as important as music, painting, or sculpture, dammit. Sometimes that’s hard to believe, I know, especially if you’ve seen any of the Twilight movies. But horror is an important and fascinating genre in its own right. It’d be one of my absolute favorites if I didn’t stop watching scary movies years ago in order to preserve my desperate belief that ghosts don’t exist.2 Expand your artistic knowledge or just celebrate a Friday the 13th Weekend and support this new festival that gives credit where it’s due.

Improv comedy! The very unique art of saying something ridiculous on the spot without thinking about it whatsoever! And Thomas George, the late improv teacher, will be commemorated with a super-fun festival starring everyone’s favorite local improv acts. Bring an extra pair of socks, because those polka-dotted ones you’re wearing are going to be laughed the heck off, dude.

Footnotes

HILARIOUS BOLLYWOOD JOKE! (That guy, who is now old, has a cameo in so many contemporary Bollywood films that it’s not even really special anymore. You may also recognize him from The Great Gatsby this year!) ↩

We all do what we gotta do in order to get a good night’s sleep in our old-as-dirt houses! ↩